Entry 2016-04-10

Dear Diary:

I've been thinking about giving the posts here a more meaningful titles. These past few days have been eventful so that seems appropriate. I'm not sure what I will do when the titles start sounds like "Another boring day at work".  I guess I can add them later along with other meta-data. But that's in case I want these to be discover-able and I'm not sure I do.

So, this morning I woke up at Heavenly Village. It's a good feeling. Waking up after a good night of sleep. It was chill, dark and very-very quiet. The wake-up part was good. I missed this. It's a little dry up here but not enough for nosebleeds or whatever. That's good. What's not good is that I kept waking up all through the night. Same as before: I think my thoughts were trying to escape. Or rather.. I didn't like my thoughts. Or maybe it was the drinks I had last night.

I just realized I can use this to track if I'm drinking,  how much and for what reason. So yesterday I had a shot of vodka on the mountain because we were freezing. Like hands shaking from cold... The shot didn't help. And in the evening we had a 45 minute wait until we could get seated at a local pizza place so we went to the bar next door. Dwight had a beer and I had a double-shot of vodka.

That aside I had unpleasant dreams because last night Dwight asked me if I was sad. More specifically he asked if I was sad about my "girlfriend situation." The answer was "yes" and the explanation that followed kept me thinking about the subject to this very hour. So I dreamed about Cate and women in Minsk and childhood friends. I kept waking up and telling myself that what I really shouldn't do is look up how any of them are doing. It's not food for thought. I have the comfort of knowing my past and should keep my eyes on the future.

As for what happened yesterday: we got drenched. It rained. It rained so heavily I was completely soaked on the very first lift up. I haven't even sat my snowboard on the slopes yet. From there the weather only got worse. The winds picked up and it started snowing. And the temperature fell (obviously, from the snow). So it was unpleasant to say the least. The fact that I forgot to bring a hat really made things worse. Much worse. Snowboarding bare-headed gave me a bad headache and if I used the hood it covered most of my vision. I could prop the hood up with the goggles but then horizontal rain going straight into my eyes etc. was also unpleasant. Eventually I put the goggles over the hood which meant I couldn't hear anything. And my goggles had the reflective coating coming off unevenly which resulted in darker patches that seriously obscured my vision.

But overall I had fun. It was good to hit the slopes again. We spent most of our time on green trails because Dwight can't carve well. That's all good. With the crammy weather I didn't want to get injured on top of everything. After Dwight was done for the day I hit the closest blue trail and enjoyed it. It was figuratively orgasmic. It's been raining/snowing all day so by the end of the session there was fresh powder. 2-3" fell while we were there. For a brief moment precipitation had stopped and the winds died down and I was about to enjoy a serene ride down a beautiful slope with so much snow. The conditions were perfect. They were so good I came down twice before heading out. Everything hurt and I was wet. The second run didn't feel quite as good but still felt amazing.

I could go on about going to multiple restaurants to find anything vegetarian that I could eat, or how there were a lot of flat trails that we couldn't board through and had to walk, which sucks in rain. Or about how I wore a trashbag for the later part of the day to at least protect from the winds. But instead I'll just say that after that I crashed. I lay in bed in wet clothes for a while before finally getting out of them and taking a warm bath. Then we went shopping. It would have been nice to go out. See a show or find people to hang out with. But I needed to buy snow pants and something to cover my head. I don't know when I became such a consumer. But I got worn out and ended up buying gloves ($25), pants ($90), neck cover ($35) and a hat ($18). I'm keeping the trashbag, too.

It's past 09:00 and I should get ready for the slopes again. I'm going. Already got my tickets and gear. It's going to rain again. This time I'm more prepared. Time to show the mountain who's the boss!